Abel Pann

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The four Matriarchs, Engel Gallery collection

Abel Pann, born 1883 as Abba Pfeffermann in Kreslawka, Vitebsk, White Russia, died 1963, was an artist eventually resident in Israel.

Pann studied the fundamentals of drawing for three months with the painter Yehuda Pen of Vitebsk, who also taught Marc Chagall. In his youth he travelled in Russia and Poland, earning a living mainly as an apprentice in sign workshops. In 1898 he went south to Odessa where he was accepted into the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1903 Pann moved to Paris and in 1913, after traveling in Southern Europe and Egypt, he arrived in Palestine where he was invited to teach in the Bezlel Academy of Art.

Biblical paintings were the core of Pann's oeuvre. The iconography of these works is linked to the 19th century orientalism which regarded the east as a world of violence, barbarism and sensuality.

As a member of the founding generation of Israeli artists Abel Pann was one of the best known and most committed exponents of certain fundamental beliefs and principles that informed Zionist art in its early days. For many years Pann was considered the most important artist in Israel, and had even greater success among Jewish art consumers abroad.